Tech Support

Being in the computer biz, I am often asked to solve technical problems for friends and family. One commonly asked question is; "my monitor is dirty, what is the best way to clean it?". Well there are a lot of ways to clean a monitor but many of them can harm the optical coating on the outside of your screen.

Here is one that will not give you that problem and it is 100% natural. And if you hurry (before the site is overrun) it's FREE!

(click on the picture)

Total Time Waster

In my endless search for things to do on my computer and on the Internet I stumble across a lot of . . . . interesting things. This is one of them, I think it's along the lines of "art for art's sake"

Click on the picture below, then click on the black box that appears on your web page and move your cursor. Very simple, very addicting.

Go ahead and click next when you are done and see some of the others. The last page takes you to these guys home page and more stuff to look at. But if you look up from your screen and you wonder were the time went . . . don't blame me.

Time Interval Photograph

I have discoverd a hidden feature with my new camera. It's called Time Interval Photography or TIP for short. I was able to take this shot at the park down the street. I had to send some guy on eBay exactly $37.57 (with free shipping) for him to tell me the secret.


Pretty cool, huh?

Truth or Fiction ?

At the 1994 annual awards dinner given for Forensic Science, AAFS, President Dr. Don Harper Mills astounded his audience with the legal complications of a bizarre death. Here is the story:
On March 23,1994 the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound to the head. Mr. Opus had jumped from the top of a ten story building intending to commit suicide. He left a note to that effect, indicating his despondency. As he fell past the ninth floor his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast passing through a window which killed him instantly.

Neither the shooter nor the descender was aware that a safety net had been installed just below at the eighth floor level to protect some building workers and that Ronald Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide the way he had planned.

"Ordinarily," Dr. Mills continued, "a person who sets out to commit suicide and ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended, is still defined as committing suicide."

That Mr. Opus was shot on the way to certain death, but probably would not have been successful because of the safety net, caused the medical examiner to feel that he had a homicide on his hands. The room on the ninth floor, whence the shotgun blast emanated, was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing vigorously and he was threatening her with a shotgun. The man was so upset that when he pulled the trigger he completely missed his wife and the pellets went through the window, striking Mr. Opus.

When one intends to kill subject A but kills subject B in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject B. When confronted with the murder charge the old man and his wife were both adamant. They both said they thought the shotgun was unloaded. Thed old man said it was his long-standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her. Therefore the killing of Mr. Opus appeared to be an accident; that is, the gun had been accidentally loaded.

The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple's son loading the shotgun about six weeks prior to the fatal accident. It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son's financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother. The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus.
Now comes the exquisite twist. Further investigation revealed that the son was, in fact, Ronald Opus. He had become increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother's murder. This led him to jump off the ten story building on March 23rd, only to be killed by a shotgun blast passing through the ninth story window. The son had actually murdered himself so the medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.

41 more Pics of Sr. Presentation

Bells of the Ball

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Katie had her NCL Senior Presentation last night at the Post Oak Hilton. This is your basic Texas Debutant Ball although there is nothing basic about it.

Sarah had one 2 years ago at the same time (here) and place. They plan all year for this event. Actually they start thinking about it when they join the organization and 6 years later they all get to be Bell..

We were out pretty late tripping the light fantastic, so when I regain full use of my faculties I will Post some more pictures in a slide show.

This Picture makes me Laugh

An Inspirational Story

This one is more than 20 years old but it still is impressive even by today's standards. Cliff Young was an Australian farmer and sheep herder. In 1983 he was 61 years old. He lived with his mother on a farm outside of Melbourne.

There was a race called an "Ultra Marathon", it ran from Sydney to Melbourne, that's 534.7 miles to us Yanks. On race day Cliff showed up at the start in Sydney. World class athletes competed in this race. No one paid attention to Cliff until he walked up to the starters table to register and get a number.

He was in his overalls and work boots with galoshes over them. Everyone thought he was crazy. He had no teeth, he was 61, and his only "trainer" was his mother (age 81). Cliff was given number 64, and the press started to take an interest. When asked why he was entering, he told them that "his farm was 2000 acres and sometimes he would run (because until 2 years ago they were to poor to afford horses or 4-wheelers) around the farm gathering the sheep before a storm and sometimes that took 2 or 3 days and this race was only a few more days." The record for the race was 6 days.

When the race started the runners left Cliff far behind. He sort of jogged-shuffled like an out of shape suburbanite might as they go for their morning half mile "run". After the first day, people were shocked. He was still in the race! He was far behind the pack but he was still running. In fact he had ran all night. The experienced racers would run 18 hours and rest 6. Cliff didn't know that was what he was supposed to do.

Along the way people cheered him on. He would smile his toothless smile, wave and jog on. People watched live race coverage to see Cliff. As the days went on, Cliff got closer and closer to the world class athletes. At night while they slept Cliff ran on. The last night, he passed all the other racers. By the last day, he was way in front of them. Not only did he run the Melbourne to Sydney race at age 61, without dying; he won first place, breaking the race record by 9 hours and became a national hero. Not knowing that he was supposed to sleep during the race, he said when running throughout the race, he imagined that he was chasing sheep and trying to outrun a storm. He had run from Sydney to Melbourne in 5 days, 15 hours and 4 minutes.

That's not all. When he was given the first prize of $10,000 he said, he didn't know there was prize money and “There’re five other runners still out there doing it tougher than me,” and he gave them $2,000 each. In fact it was said he never kept any of the things he was given. He always passed them on to a child or someone he met soon after receiving the gift or award.

This happened before Google or Microsoft but it is true. I read several stories about Mr. Young, and I thought I might pass it along so you might be inspired too.

Happy New Year

OK, this year I am going to do better. Sometimes the posts have been few and far between, but not in 2008.

I have a random act of kindness to report. One of Katie's friends, Laura, brought over a gift from her and her parents - a bottle of Agave Tequila for Linda and I. I have never met her parents, but they sent us something anyway to say "we are glad our daughters are friends, Happy New Year". I wish I had thought of that. Happy New Year